Stockmanship Journal

Friday, August 8, 2014

Why Climate Change Scientists Are Clueless

Like Chicken Little yelling "The sky is falling" climate change scientists are giving reasons behind the phenomenon which are largely unrelated to the actual causes. One of the false flags behind "global warming" is greenhouse gases. They may contribute a small amount, but in reality it is the lack of grasslands which it the biggest contributor.

Early day explorers described the vast majority of western America as a "sea of grass." While there are no stories describing how settlers livestock died of starvation, there are plenty of livestock perishing from a lack of water. Today much of this land has become bare ground because of the lack of proper animal impact. To demonstrate just how much the lack of grass cover reflects heat back into the atmosphere, I checked the air temperature, then checked the temperature on a patch of grass, and also a path of bare ground.

Notice that the grass covered area is approximately eleven degrees warmer than the air while the bare ground is twenty five degrees warmer than air temperature.

We now have millions upon millions of acres just in North America which have gone from lush grasslands to bare ground and brush in the last 130 years. Add to this the millions of acres of grasslands which have been replaced with buildings and pavement, what is really the cause of global warming? Greenhouse gases (which could be converted to oxygen by grasses) or the depletion of the world's grasslands?

Now lets examine rising oceans. According to scientists, the oceans are rising as a result of the polar ice caps melting. The reason the ice caps are melting, say scientists, is because of rising temperatures. Is this actually the case, or are the ice caps melting due to the ocean levels rising? Once again, the sources of the problem are ignored.

The above picture was taken after a thunderstorm dropped under a half inch of rain. As one can see, rather than go into the ground, much of the water is running off. When a thunderstorm drops two inches and half of it is running off rather than going into the ground, that equals 27,154 water peracre returning to rivers and into the ocean. For every thousand acres this amounts to 27,154,000 gallons of water returning to the ocean, or trillions of gallons of water world wide returning to the sea rather than soaking into the ground.

Adding to the contribution of waters returning to the sea rather than soaking into the ground, is flood control. Water which would flood deltas and return some of it into the ground, are now kept between dykes and returned to the ocean. How many hundreds of trillions of gallons of water which should be returned to the ground are now channeled directly into the ocean by the Mississippi River flood control system?
It becomes fairly obvious that the real culprit of rising oceans and temperatures is not greenhouse gases, but depletion of grasslands preventing precipitation from cycling into the ground to replenish ground water, and not insulating the ground.

Scientists blame depletion of grasslands on "overgrazing." Keep in mind that this same land which now supports under 90,000,000 cows once supported nearly 300,000,000 bison in addition to millions each of antelope, elk and deer. The problem is not too many animals on not enough land, but in how those animals are grazed.

Ranchers who have abandoned traditional grazing methods and changed to holistic grazing have actually reversed desertification and restored grasslands. By changing his grazing methods, the rancher below was able to restore the grass on land which was nearly bare to what you see in the picture below. This land has little to no run off because the grasses slow the water and allow it to penetrate the ground.

Mainstream scientists need to get a clue, not only to the real causes of climate change and rising oceans, but in the science behind restoring grasslands to their original state.

1 comment:

Great post Bob. Just today I was explaining to an associate how growing our own food in deep mulch gardens without tilling frees up huge acreages of sterile crop land to be restored through rotational grazing. Thought you might like this explanation of how one thing is related to another and everything is related to every thing else:

About Me

I have been involved with cattle since I was a young child. Since 1972 I have spent the majority of the time working ranches and feedlots across the west. I am available for consulting or training in reduced stress cattle handling. If you are following a rotational grazing program I can show you how to make it more efficient by herding and eliminating interior fences. Feel free to comment or contact me with your questions!